U.S. Route 6 in Massachusetts (US 6) is a 117.95 mi (189.83 km) long portion of the cross-country
U.S. Route 6 highway connecting
Providence, Rhode Island to
Fall River,
New Bedford, and
Cape Cod. In the Fall River and New Bedford areas, US 6 is a secondary highway paralleling
Interstate 195. On Cape Cod, US 6 is the primary highway interconnecting the towns of the area. The expressway section in this area is also known as the Mid-Cape Highway. The route is also alternatively signed as the "Grand Army of the Republic Highway."

Once Route 6 enters Fall River, Route 138 leaves its concurrency and US 6 follows the two halves of Davol Street on either side of
Massachusetts Route 79 before turning east on two-lane President Avenue, following up the Seven Hills to the Highlands neighborhood. At the end of President Avenue the road turns southward at a rotary (which also provides access to
Massachusetts Route 24) onto four-lane Eastern Avenue. The road crosses over Interstate 195 one last time before turning eastward along Martine Street onto the "Narrows," the thin strip of land between the
Watuppa Ponds that also carries the interstate between Fall River and Westport. Once over the Narrows, the road turns southeast, travelling on a straight line through the town. Interstate 195 can be accessed from Route 6 in Westport via
Massachusetts Route 88, which crosses over Route 6 shortly before ending at the interstate. At the Dartmouth line, the road turns due east at the eastern end of
Massachusetts Route 177. After passing through the Dartmouth retail area and two roads (Reed Road and Faunce Corner Road) that provide access to Interstate 195, the route passes into the city of New Bedford.

In New Bedford, the route splits just east of the terminus of
Massachusetts Route 140 onto Kempton Street (eastbound) and Mill Street (westbound), two one-lane, one-way streets. The two halves join again to cross over
Massachusetts Route 18 just before crossing the
New Bedford – Fairhaven Bridge into the town of
Fairhaven. After passing the terminus of
Massachusetts Route 240 the route continues east into
Mattapoisett and
Marion along a four-lane road. Access to I-195 is provided in both towns along North Street in Mattapoisett and
Massachusetts Route 105 in Marion. US 6 then crosses the
Weweantic River into Wareham. In the central part of town the route turns southeast along Main Street, then east-northeast along Sandwich Road before beginning a concurrency with
Massachusetts Route 28, with the first 3⁄4 mile (1.2 km) being split one-way between east and west, just south of
Massachusetts Route 25, the major connecting highway between Cape Cod and Interstates 195 and 495. The route passes through busy retail area of East Wareham before passing into the
Buzzards Bay section of Bourne. The two routes split into east and west one-way sections again before Route 28 leaves the concurrency to cross the
Bourne Bridge across the Cape Cod Canal. US 6 then follows the western side of the canal along the Scenic Highway before joining the right-of-way for
Massachusetts Route 3 that ends at the
Sagamore Bridge, in which US 6 crosses onto
Cape Cod proper.

Cape Cod

After crossing the canal via the Sagamore Bridge, US 6 becomes a
freeway, known as the Mid-Cape Highway. From
Bourne to
Dennis at the
cloverleaf interchange for exits 9A and 9B, the freeway is 4 lanes. The bridges from the
Cape Cod Canal, to Oak Street in
Barnstable Village (a half-mile west of Route 132), are unique in their construction since they are made out of concrete and granite. The road then reduces to a
two-lane freeway with plastic stanchions posted on a small
asphalt median. The two-lane freeway section has a secondary, less-formal name of "Suicide Alley", due to the high number of fatalities from
head-on collisions before the median improvements were constructed from 1989-1992. The Mid-Cape Highway carries a
speed limit of 55 miles per hour (89 km/h) on the standard freeway and 50 miles per hour (80 km/h) on the two-lane freeway. It remains like this until
Orleans, where the freeway ends at a large
rotary.

Through
Eastham and North
Truro, US 6 is a four-lane surface street once again. Through
Wellfleet and southern
Truro, US 6 is a former 3-lane road converted to 2 lanes with broad shoulders. In
Provincetown, US 6 is locally maintained, and ends as it started in the state, as a surface expressway once again before meeting
Route 6A at the
Cape Cod National Seashore. For the last several miles of its existence near Provincetown Route 6 east is actually heading west-southwest.

History

US 6's westbound facing terminus in
Provincetown. This sign was erected in Summer 2010

New England Interstate Route 3

Before the U.S. Highway system, the route from Rhode Island to
Bourne, and from Orleans to Provincetown, was part of New England Interstate Route 3 (NE-3). Within the Upper Cape, however, NE-3 went along what is now
Route 28 between Bourne and Orleans. The U.S. 6 designation was instead applied to the route on the north shore of Cape Cod, which was known as
New England Interstate Route 6 before 1926 (now
Route 6A).

Prior to the building of Interstate 195, the Fall River portion of Route 6 followed a different alignment. After entering the city via the Brightman Street Bridge, the route followed Davol Street to Turner Street, where it split to Durfee Street, a short portion of South Main Street and Pleasant Street (eastbound) and North Main Street to Bedford Street to Eastern Avenue (westbound, in reverse order). Both routes then took Pleasant Street east of Eastern Avenue to McGowan Street, which crossed into Westport and joined the current alignment of Route 6. The current alignment of these streets would be impossible now, as Turner Street's connection to Durfee Street is blocked, and both Pleasant Street and McGowan Street end just before the ramps between Interstate 195 and Route 24. Their former pathway into Westport is also gone, replaced by the path of the interstate. The only remnants of the old path is the odd turn Old Bedford Road takes before intersecting, having once been a separate street; the original alignment would have extended straight to Route 6.

U.S. Route 6 Bypass

When U.S. 6 was first routed through Provincetown in 1926, the highway was signed along the rather narrow Commercial Street. After the Provincetown U.S. 6 bypass was built, congestion and the increasing size of automobiles forced the town to post most of Commercial Street (all but the easternmost mile that hits the Truro line) as one-way westbound.
Route 6A, when signed, was placed along the paralleling Bradford Street instead. There was an alternate plan at the time to make Bradford one-way westbound and Commercial one-way eastbound (which would have made both roads Route 6A), but this was rejected, as the town decided instead to let incoming traffic through the heavy Commercial Street (almost entirely pedestrian) business district.

U.S. 6 was briefly signed on current
I-195 between
Route 105 and
Route 28; however, when I-195 was completed, and the I-195 designation took over that section of freeway, U.S. 6 reverted to its older route.

Formerly, U.S. 6 took both sides along the
Cape Cod Canal (and was signed as "BYPASS 6"), but is now routed only on the north side (The
south side is now signed "TO 6" from the
Sagamore Bridge to the
Bourne Bridge). However, a single "BYPASS 6" sign still exists along Sandwich Road just north of the Bourne Bridge rotary.

Future

MassDOT planned to change the
exit numbers along the Mid-Cape Highway in 2016 as part of sign replacement contract to be run concurrently with a statewide project to convert freeway exit numbers from a
sequential to a
distance-based system.[2] The new exit numbers would have ranged from 55 in
Sandwich to 88 in
Orleans.[3] The first interchange on the Mid-Cape with
Route 3 that is now signed as exits 1A-B would have been resigned as exits 55A-B, and so forth. However, in February 2016, when local Cape Cod officials found out about the plan, including the new numbers and that the signs would be larger than the current ones to be placed on overhead
gantries, they complained to MassDOT and their local
legislators. In response, MassDOT announced at a June 2016 public meeting that it listened to the public comments and were re-designing the signs to match the size of the current ones and that the exit numbers would not be changed, for now. The exit tabs and gore signs for the new signage would be designed however so the milepost numbers could fit on them, if changed, sometime in the future.[4] The winning bid for the scaled down contract simply to replace the signs was made by Liddell Bros. Inc. of
Halifax and announced on February 7, 2017. The project should start later in the spring and could be completed by the end of the year.[5]